Zibbit Twochains
Introduction | Descriptions | Skills and Abilities | History | Enemies and Allies The Giddiest Death Knight You are being hunted by Thunderlord Orcs on the plains of Frostfire Ridge and things are looking increasingly grim. Before you, a band of outriders advancing persistantly. To your back, a cliff with a sheer drop into the ocean; a drop you won't survive. Rock walls on either side. There's nowhere to go but through them, and you're badly hurt. A trail of blood follows you in the snow from the wounds you've already sustained. You may not survive this. Steeling yourself for their charge, you ready your weapon as you close your eyes and brace for impact. Instead of the orcish warcries, you hear a whooping shout of joy from the rock ridge above you. "Heyyyy stupid orcs! Pick on someone your own size!"' ' Slowly, you open your eyes again and look up - and there she is, in all her crazed glory. Nothing more than a tiny goblin girl dressed in lacquered purple armor. She's riding on the shoulders of what looks like it might be a ghoul, though with the large blue bustier and nail polish it doesn't pack the same visceral punch a regular ghoul would. The goblin boots him in the shoulder and he roars, leaping from the cliff as she laughs. The motley pair charge into the Thunderlords, a ball of raw energy and pure chaos. Her scythe and his claws tear through opponents, ripping skin and rending limbs. It looks like the goblin is leaving a cloud of plagues in her wake, too - anyone who survives her or the ghouls' physical assaults is rapidly encased in a haze of green that swims into the wounds. Those who get infected seem to slow down and eventually collapse into the snow. When they're finished, only one orc is left - and he's running across the tundra in a desperate attempt to flee. The goblin reigns in her mount and watches the straggler go. "Ah, they always run like that, the big chickens," she sighs, lowering her scythe a little. Then she notices you're there, her ice blue eyes lighting up. "Oh, hi there! Do you need a place to go and be safe for a bit?" She offers you a hand as she slings her scythe on her back. "Come on, we'll go to the garrison!" Top Who is She? Physical Description At a distance, Zibbit kind of looks like she might just be an average-sized female goblin fighter of some sort, dressed in brightly lacquered purple and yellow armor and wearing an absolutely garish cloak to 'match'. She's always got a two-handed scythe with her when she's out in public, and seems fairly protective of the weapon. It's when you start to look at the details that she gets weird. Her once vibrant pinkish-purple hair is greasy, but it is well taken care of regardless and pinned up into chaotic pigtails with tarnished metal barrettes shaped like the faces of different small animals, the sort a small girl might wear. She almost always smiles and laughs, especially at inappropriate times. She smells of decay and dirt, and it's clear bathing is not a priority for her. There are occasionally small bugs - they look like beetles of some kind - skittering between the plates of her armor; she never seems to notice them. Her pallid and somewhat cracked (though intact) greenish skin hangs off her like a cheap suit, never quite conforming the way it should to her tiny body. The weirdest thing about her, though, is the way she moves. Her movements are frequently disjointed and jerking, almost as if she were a marionette or a disguise being worn by something that doesn't understand how two-legged movement is supposed to work, and some of her joints bend in ways they probably shouldn't sometimes. Then there's her 'mount'. If she's in public, she's nearly always mounted - seated on the shoulders of a formerly human ghoul who she refers to as Mister Fancy, using his hair as reigns. Mister Fancy is a fairly typical ghoul in base physical form - raised to be a Scourge killing machine initially, he possesses vicious claws and sharp teeth alongside a particularly ravenous demeanor. He seems to be almost made of raging, angry hunger, straining against Zibbit's pull and making frequent attempts to grab at passing wildlife when unchecked. A testament to the fights he's been in, some of Mister Fancy's skin is torn and bone is exposed in some locations. This does not seem to slow him down. Unfortunately for him, Zibbit is not a fan of that Scourgey look. His sharp claws have been painted a garish red in a very slapdash way; they're often partly chipped and the polish overruns the edges of the nails entirely in some spots. His greasy, dirty hair has been braided into about a dozen different sized braids, all tied off with grubby but brightly colored ribbons in careful (but imperfect) bows. And to top it off, he's wearing an oversized blue leather Vrykul bustier with a name tag slapped to the front - it reads 'HELLO MY NAME IS MISTER FANCY' in purple crayon. Some of the letters are backwards. Zibbit's seat is the top of a large, many-pocketed backpack situated on the ghoul's shoulders. It has several little charms and tags dangling from the various clasps and zippers, all of which appear to be cheap novelty items and souvenirs from various cities and shrines. They jingle and clank against each other when Mister Fancy runs. Physiological Oddities Though her outer skin is definitely a fairly well-preserved goblin hide, little else of Zibbit is (or was) what could actually be considered a living being. Designed by the lab lackies working under Professor Putricide, she is a construct that consists of a complex network of flexible tubes, bags, and miniaturized brewing factories for plagues hung upon a specially constructed Titansteel frame modeled on the skeletons of several specimens of gnomes and goblins they personally dismantled for reference. As a result of being expertly engineered and tested, the frame is capable of withstanding a tremendous amount of exterior and interior stress. It is nearly unbreakable, and is able to move in ways a normal skeleton can't thanks to the replacement of several hinge joints with ball and sockets instead. Musculature is provided by the plague-tubes - she can 'flex', pumping more diseases into an area she wishes to strengthen - this pushes several extra pistons into functionality and allows for a nearly titanic strength increase despite her small stature. One side effect of the strange muscle system and ball joints, however, is movement abnormality: Zibbit is easily spotted as being unnatural by anyone who watches her jerky, strange walk and her ticks. Her candy addictions actually seem to be part of her internal plague replenishment programs, too - the high sugar content provided by her 'diet' creates a perfect storm of catalytic reactions and required nutrients in her main storage tank, and this upgrades the speed at which she can produce and deploy plagues by an incredible amount. It is unknown whether this was planned for in her original blueprints or if it was accidentally discovered during a trip to Dalaran's famous pastry stall, but either way it provides a huge benefit to her. Where she really differs, however, is inside her brain-case. Her head is home to the Plague-o-Matic Thinking Engine 2.0, one of the lab's more interesting breakthroughs. Through it, Zibbit is capable of speech and thought processing using a neural-net framework built almost entirely of alchemically distilled diseases and barely comprehensible mad science level engineering work. Unfortunately, it was never perfected before she was released by force from the lab; her programming is unfinished and she is stuck at the relative level of a hyperactive six or seven year old human child for thought capability and reasoning. Personality Description Contrary to many Death Knights, Zibbit is perpetually happy and extraordinarily friendly towards everyone she meets. She has a very childlike demeanor, being excited about damn near everything and finding 'life', such as it is, to be the greatest of adventures, which tends to manifest as an almost suicidal recklessness in combat and general patrolling. She seems to lack a fear response entirely. Her only drive in life - the one thing she wants more than anything - is to be a hero, though she seems to lack an understanding of what that means aside from following orders given by those 'mightier' than she is, someone telling her she's a hero, and having pretty armor. She is extremely curious and has a tendency to stick her nose where it probably shouldn't be, and has no sense of when she should back off - the irritability of others seems to not register with her at all. She also seems to lack an understanding of cruelty towards herself, taking thrown objects as gifts and not really understanding sarcastic comments about her bathing habits or general weirdness. Zibbit has a near pathological fixation on candy, sweet baked goods, and most other sugary items. She can often be seen with at least one of those items in her possession, if not stuffed directly in her mouth. Top Skills and Abilities Plague Production and Dispensing: Zibbit's body is home to a state-of-the-art, if confusingly designed, plague factory. With no input from outside sources, she can brew several deadly infections inside her own storage tanks and 'share' those plagues with other people through specialized contact-based dispensers in her hands and feet. She can also project some of those plagues at a distance, and has the ability to spread disease from one infected source to multiple other living creatures seemingly at will. Ghoul Control: By cranking her diseases into a corpse, Zibbit can create a ghoul thrall to fight with her. The ghoul has limited thought capacity, but will follow her commands and assault her enemies. While some other Death Knights are capable of commanding entire armies of risen minions, Zibbit only seems to be able to hold true command over one minion at a time. She favors a formerly human ghoul by the name of Mister Fancy. Melee Training: Zibbit has been trained in hand-to-hand combat using a variety of large weapons by the Ebon Knights. Her style is best described as chaos incarnate, however - whatever combat disciplines and stances they attempted to instill in her haven't stuck, and she tends to bob and weave around the battlefield seemingly at random, damaging everything in her wake. Mounted Combat: While she can fight on foot decently, Zibbit is much more effective when mounted on the back of Mister Fancy. She is an extremely dangerous ghoulback knight, and though she looks ridiculous riding on her ghoul's shoulders, both her and Mister Fancy are very capable fighters with her up there. Her being on ghoulback only seems to add to the sheer chaos she creates on a battlefield, and heavily increases her mobility. Titanic Strength: A result of her specialized physical engineering, Zibbit is capable of outputting far more strength than her size suggests. She is often unaware of the level of power she actually possesses, but she has been witnessed engaging in hand-to-hand combat with creatures much larger than herself without straining. Plate Armor: An important part of being a knight, and thus a hero, is armor. Zibbit learned this from watching the adventurers who came through the Ebon Hold during her training, and has not forgotten it. As such, she is never in a fight without her custom-made plate armor. In fact, she doesn't go anywhere without it. Top History The Origin of Her Skin Born in Booty Bay to a pair of Steamwheedle Cartel fixers named Dexx (a warrior) and Teknina (a mage), the original Zibbit Twochains was the second child in her family to pick up some sort of adventuring life. She showed an aptitude for biology and, in her fathers' opinion, the "weakness" of a fairly kind heart at a young age, and took to mending wounds and curing simple diseases and poisons with alchemy. She was a fast study and in no time had apprenticed herself (at least unofficially) to a local potion seller. Noticing Zibbit's talents,, her mother immediately pushed her to join the Airborne Priest Corps that flew out of the harbor as soon as she reached appropriate age, figuring that not only would she earn herself and the family a very decent sum of gold, but also gain the prestige and connections that are so vital to a young goblin's social standing. Zibbit's swift fingers, top-notch mending techniques and on-the-ball rescues did her well, and she became known as a go-to healer locally - even if her prices were sometimes a little steep (mostly at the urging of her parents). When the Lich King's armies threatened to overrun Azeroth again, Zibbit did something her parents didn't foresee - she abandoned her post with the Airborne Priests, packed up her stuff and left home to lend aide to the Horde during their assault on Icecrown Citadel. Despite some small successes in their initial push, Zibbit fell to the diseases pumped out by the Death Knights under Arthas' command. She breathed her last before the combined Alliance-Horde assault made it up the front stairs of the icy fortress. Her corpse was retrieved by two of Professor Putricide's gnomish lab goons and dragged into his lab for further use. One Night in the Lab Putricide's lab was well into a project designed to effectively sneak-deliver the plagues they engineer into the heart of Horde and Alliance cities when Zibbit's corpse was appropriated. The plan was to construct an automaton that was indistinguishable from an actual living being and send it back disguised as an injured member of one of the assault teams, with instructions to deliver a massive disease payload when it was inside the gates of a capital city. By the time Zibbit was brought into the Citadel on a slab, the project had made enough progress to have a team determine it would be easiest to build one of the two smallest races - despite the size limitations on the disease tanks that could be installed, the compact frames held up the best under stress testing than the larger ones. All the tanks and projectors were installed and fully functional. Testing had begun on the neural net that would be in command of the unit, the Plague-o-Matic Thinking Engine 2.0. All it really needed was a proper skin. Despite attempts to create some kind of synthetic skin, it never looked quite right. When Zibbit's corpse rolled into the lab though, the problem was solved - one of the assistants carefully flayed it and stitched the hide back together on the Titansteel frame after a brief period of treatment to prevent further decay and to allow the skin to hold elasticity. The entire apparatus was put in a stasis tank as the programming was being finished to further ensure preservation of the skin and to kickstart the disease creation process. It was there that she was found by a Horde party. Leaving the Lab During the actual assault on Icecrown, a group of Horde adventurers managed to destroy Putricide's lab and take down the scientist in a spectacular fight. Afterwards, they turned to the pre-approved looting and pillaging of the area. Zibbit's own brother, Grazix "Busta" Twochains, spotted her floating in a tank and immediately smashed the glass, releasing her into his arms. He insisted taking his baby sister home with him. He was eventually talked down by the group's leader when another member of the party found the plans for the construct's creation, and the barely-functional Zibbit-skinned thing was take instead to Shadowvault and left with the Knights of the Ebon Blade until such time as she could be deemed safe. While under their care, she learned. Initially she was very limited in function and didn't even speak beyond using her own name (which she had picked up from Grazix); within months she was up and fighting for their cause. Her own brother was terrified of her, however, and refused to let her come home when he saw what she had become. He left her with the Ebon Blade permanently. The Ebon Blade couldn't find a great use for the construct, however - she was too easily distracted to send on long missions and voiced wishes to leave Shadowvault and "become a hero" frequently. The day she stole a carpet from Silvermoon to use as a heroic cape was the final straw; the Ebon Blade's leadership sent her to Undercity with a quest: Find someone there (they were intentionally unspecific on this front), hand them a note and become a hero. Zibbit was overjoyed and eventually found her way to Undercity Nexus after getting lost, redirected and misdirected several times over, crashing a guild meeting on the back of Mister Fancy. She was tentatively accepted by their leadership based on the letter from the death knights, and has since been dispatched to their outpost in Frostfire Ridge, where is is now acting as an outrider/mounted knight. Stories of Zibbit can be found here. Top Enemies and Allies As a consequence of her semi-functionality, Zibbit does not believe she actually -has- enemies. She sees everyone as a potential friend, even people who throw fruit at her. She does occasionally attempt to share diseases with other people; while they may believe this act is hostile, it isn't. Zibbit considers her diseases friends and family, and as a result only wants to share their existence with other people. She doesn't quite understand why they wouldn't always be wanted. She is only actively hostile towards people who are outright attempting to kill her or people attempting to cause harm to her "protecty guys" - as a result it's probably not a great idea to threaten members of Undercity Nexus while she's present, especially not the priests. Top Category:Undercity Nexus Category:Goblin Category:Death Knights Category:Undead Category:Knights Category:Characters